


Wrong Turn

by BloodyAbattoir



Series: Life Goes On [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyAbattoir/pseuds/BloodyAbattoir
Summary: You took a wrong turn on your way home. As the sun sets, you realize that you're lost in the wrong side of town. You're not alone. You would've preferred it if you were.





	Wrong Turn

The sun lowered itself towards the horizon, the mass of gas and lava that powered your tiny existence slipping out of sight moment by moment. It was low enough in the sky to throw long, spindly shadows wherever something had the audacity to impede its path to the earth. In perhaps another half hour, the sun would have sunk entirely below the horizon, blanketing your city in darkness, with only the gas lamps that lined the street to provide a path to see by. Of course, only a fool, or someone very, very brave would be out after dark in this town after the recent events in the South End. As you were neither, you pulled your coat slightly tighter around your frame, and picked up your pace slightly. Fast enough to make it home well before the sun went down, but not so fast as to be considered a prey creature on the move.

 

As you made your way through one narrow street after another, you cursed mentally. Why did your coworkers decide to hold that meeting at the very end of the day? And more importantly, why couldn't Karen stop asking stupid question after stupid question? The meeting had droned on for over an hour, a mind numbing loop of the same half dozen questions and answers. Part of you wondered if it was out of spite. She knew that you were the only one on that team who did not have a car at this point, a foolish idea if there ever were one, what with the days shortening and the nights lengthening and the temperatures slowly crawling towards freezing.

 

She also knew that you were the only thing standing between her and that promotion that she so desperately wanted. If only you were out of the way...

 

You shook yourself out of that train of thought almost as soon as it started. Karen was an airhead, simple as that. She could barely remember how to use her own computer. The notion that she would hatch such a plot against you was laughable at best, and pathetic at worst. After all, it wasn't like she had any connections that could ensure that your late evening trip home would be your very last one.

 

As you reminded yourself of this, you stopped dead in your tracks. So absorbed as you were with rehashing the events that had transpired at work today, your body went on autopilot as your mind wandered. In the slanting sunlight, this had the effect of sending you off-course. Looking around, the first thing that you noticed was that the buildings that surrounded you were much older than the buildings that occupied the area your firm was located in, and still older than the block of flats that you called home. Sleek glass and steel and concrete had been exchanged for peeling pant on crumbling homes, squat and darkened with broken and boarded over windows. The street itself bore testament to the neighborhood that you had found yourself located in, narrow and cobbled, with garbage accumulating in the gutters.

 

A shiver ran up your spine and your shuddered. You knew exactly where you were. Well, not quite. But you knew enough, and could hazard an educated guess, based off the looks and conditions of your surroundings to surmise that you had somehow wandered into the South End.

 

Fear bubbled up in your throat as your realized that the light was growing dimmer, and the sun was but a large sliver descending ever-faster towards the horizon in front of you. You could no longer hear the cars on the main thoroughfare. The only car around that you could see was a dilapidated shell sitting on flat tyres a half block further down.

 

You endeavored to look up, and see if perhaps you could catch sight of the large buildings that were the signature of the buildings downtown, an area that while not entirely safe, was much safer than where you were now. You'd at least be able to find a hotel, or in a worst case scenario, lock yourself in your office at work until the sun started to rise in the morning. You wondered why you hadn't called a cab, and then realized, it was because you were still within walking distance to get home before the sun set if you kept a brisk pace and did not stop. However, this meant that while you would've already been home by now, it also meant that you were further into the unpleasant side of town than you otherwise would have been.

 

No matter how hard you craned your neck up, the leaning buildings above you, despite only being two or three stories tall each, blocked out any hopes of sighting the skyscrapers that marked your best chance of safety tonight. At this point, the only thing for you to do would be to stop and retrace your steps as best as you could. Even if you did not manage to wind up in place that you recognized and could safely stay in, you knew that based off where you last remember being, you would either end up walking back north, to the relatively nice area of downtown that you worked in, east to the neighborhood you actually lived in, or either south or west to the massive river that bordered your city.

 

With that thought running through your mind, and considering yourself sure of that, and sure of yourself, you turned around and you started to walk. You nearly froze as you saw something moving out of the corner of your eye as you turned. However, when you looked at it straight on, there was nothing there. Must just be a cat, everything should still be safe at this time, although your time of relative safety was quickly running out. Trying to push the worst of the thoughts out of your mind, you shook your head vigorously and picked up the pace just a bit.

 

Despite your vigilance, your ears straining for any possible sound, any sign of danger, and your eyes peeled for the slightest sign of anything familiar, your mind proceeded unbidden, calling up the past several months worth of headlines. In your minds eye, you could see  the gory images that the newspapers somehow saw fit to publish in print and digital, of what remained of the poor victims who were caught out late at night wandering around the South End. For the most part, it had been drug addicts and runaways, the very dregs of society who were so far into the heart of danger that they wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell at getting away.

 

Then, you felt the cold hands of ice clench around your heart as your mind brought up one very inconvenient fact for you. There was another woman, about your age, who had not been a runaway or a drug addict. She was slaughtered like an animal this morning. More importantly, however, was the fact that she had not been miles into the dilapidated area like the other victims had been. Instead, she had been a mere few blocks away from a largely populated area. They were getting bolder, and more reckless.

 

Of course, you weren't quite sure what _they_ actually were. The rumours abounded on the street. Ask a dozen different people, and you would get a dozen different answers as to what exactly was prowling around the decaying streets you now stood on. A cult of some sort. Vampires. Demons. The list went on and on. Officially, the first several news stories had attributed the deaths to a mugging gone wrong, or perhaps a pack of feral dogs.

 

As the killings continued, of course, the police were unable to stick by that story. Even when furious, it didn't seem like a mugger was capable of exerting that much damage on a single person, even if they were pissed off. After all, none of the corpses seem to have had any stab wounds or gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, the idea of the attacks coming from a pack of feral dogs quickly lost credence as people began to wonder just how large these dogs must have been in order to cause injuries to the face and neck. For one, whatever was doing these killings was not leaving the victim with bite marks, so much as it was leaving them with chunks of flesh missing. Secondly, and this was the most damming part of it, the bite marks didn't seem to match any known breed of dogs. They lacked the narrow, cylindrical shape of the dogs teeth. Instead, they were wide and flat. The police no longer claimed the murders were perpetrated by a pack of feral dogs.

 

If the city had been better funded, if there had been more police officers to go around, they might've cordoned off the entire dratted area. Instead, an already small police force that was stretched thin was forced to restructure. Most of them guarded the wealthy upper class residential neighborhoods, and a fair amount of them, albeit less of them, spent their time patrolling around downtown and main street. Meanwhile, the slums and areas like this had little to no police presence. They figured warning signs pasted up on the sides of the buildings would suffice was warning and protection enough. Not for the first time, you wondered how you managed to miss those signs.

 

Then, you wondered how the police force would even be content with that, how they could ever consider that as being protection enough. Behind you, you heard a faint skittering. You paused, straining to hear another sound behind you. A slight whisper of a breath. You whipped around, hand clenched into a fist, ready to strike. There was nothing on the street, not even a stray cat. There was nowhere to hide , unless whoever or whatever had been behind you was able to either disappear into thin air or somehow conceal itself in one of the abandoned houses that surrounded you.

 

You pushed the thought out of your head, and started to walk again, a little faster this time. As you did, the sounds of passing cars on the freeway started to filter through to you. Yes, you were certainly going the right way now. Another ten minutes at best, and you would be back to somewhere safe. Or at least, safer than where you were now. However, there was a very strong chance that you didn't actually have another ten minutes. The sun was nearly entirely below the horizon now, and everything was taking on the blue and purple and grey shades of dusk. You weighed your options. At this point, your best choice was to run.

 

So you did. You broke into a full fledged sprint, arms and legs lashing out and your coat whipping the air behind you. You didn't care about looking like prey anymore. Instead, all you cared was that you would make it back to a place where there was light after sunset, even if only in the forms of dim streetlamps.

 

From behind you came the sound of a scraping sort of shuffle, followed by a thump.

 

You let out a yelp of fear, and pushed yourself to go further.

 

Up ahead, you could see the faint lights of the historic district start to flicker on to herald the approaching night as you rounded a corner. You were so close to being home free that you let your guard down. That momentary indiscretion had been all that it took. 

 

As the rotting hands closed on you, and you felt the decayed and cracked teeth start to tear into your flesh, you thought, this was worse. All of the stories that you had heard were nothing compared to this. To die so close to safety, where you could see the lights of the rest of the city across a narrow footbridge was nearly as painful as the feeling of teeth tearing through flesh until they met the resistance of bone.


End file.
